


Not Quite Home

by kaihire



Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Prompt Fic, Tumblr, utter fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaihire/pseuds/kaihire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <a href="blazinghell.tumblr.com">blazinghell</a> answered: Tony/Steve: one or the other gets transported to an alternate Earth, and has to deal with how the native version of the other reacts to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Home

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on [my Tumblr](http://kaihire.tumblr.com/post/12103560134/fic-prompt-1).

How many times had Tony told him to stay away from the experimental equipment? How many times had he tried to impress on him the significance of it being  _untested_  and  _potentially deadly_  and otherwise a no-Steve zone? But every once in a while, Steve still forgot, or didn’t find a given small box or wall panel particularly intimidating, and then Tony had to go through the whole speech again.

Until Steve finally did it: he tripped over a cable as thick as his forearm on the floor and went face-first through a plasma-beam generator prototype that shouldn’t have been on, but was activated by the kick at its wire.

And then Tony was screaming at the console, fingers flying over buttons in a desperate attempt to prevent the translator from activating, even as he saw Steve one moment and the next, nothing but thin air.

“JARVIS. Get me Dr Smith at MIT’s Transdimensional Physics Institute. _Now_.”

+

Steve felt like he’d blacked out for hours, though the amount of time that passed had been less than a heartbeat. His vision didn’t kick in for a moment and he wobbled, catching himself against the side of a building, the mortar rough and real under his touch.

 _What just happened?_

“Steve? What are you doing out here?”

Steve shook his head to clear it, a moment of tunnel vision making him rub his eyes. He was just outside of Tony’s house, and luckily not on the cliff end.  _That could have been so much worse_ , he thought, blinking away the last of the dizzy spell.

“Steve?”

“I’m alright, Tony. Guess I should really listen to you when you tell me that stuff’s dangerous.”

But Tony was looking at him funny, and Steve started to realize something was a little… off. It wasn’t anything startling, like a green sky or twin suns or anything like the crazy science fiction books he sometimes read. But Tony’s hair was combed rather than tousled, and the house was painted a few shades darker than he remembered, and the big tree he’d once spent two days drawing was on the wrong side of the driveway.

“Steve, how did you get outside?”

Tony was walking over the grass towards him, and Steve had the inexplicable urge to bolt—but where was there to run to? What was even going on?

“Wh-what do you mean, how did I get outside? I thought your box-thing that I wasn’t supposed to touch zapped me out here. Or did it knock me through a wall?” he asked, feeling his head for any obvious bumps and glancing at the house for any signs of damage. No easy answer appeared.

“Tony? Did you call me?”

The voice came from a window, and when Steve looked up he almost wished he hadn’t. It was  _him_ , or at least an incredibly good imitation of him, except this Steve had a cheerful, innocent look on his face and was wearing a shirt that looked far more expensive than anything Steve normally bought. Not-Tony glanced from Steve to Not-Steve (it had to be a Not-Steve, Steve thought, or he was going to go insane—if he wasn’t already) and back again, and then crossed the lawn to stand in front of him.

Not-Tony’s brown eyes were looking up at him intently, and if Steve hadn’t thought it was crazy, he would have thought he saw them filling up with tears until Tony cleared his throat and reached out to touch him.

“Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. How did you get here?”

“Uh. Well. Like I said, I tripped over that big wire and then touched the box, and—”

“The box?”

“The one in your work-room,” Steve said, unhelpfully, and Not-Tony grimaced before pulling out some sort of flat metal thing that looked a lot like one of those smartphones Tony was always carrying, except this had a larger screen and a couple of clear buttons. Not-Tony swept it around in the air, almost like the metal detector wands Tony had had to explain to him at an airport, and when the screen beeped and he read whatever it had to tell him, he started to make the most bizarre series of facial expressions Steve had ever seen.

“You better come inside,” Not-Tony finally said, and in case Steve thought he had a say in the matter he caught him by the upper arm and led him into the house.

+

“So what you’re saying is, he got flung into an alternate universe?”

Tony carded his fingers through his hair hard enough to hurt. The video feed showed a short, balding man in a white lab coat with a stack of yellow notepads spread out in front of him.

“It appears that way, Mr Stark. Based on the data you sent me and the parameters your device was set to, I believe these are the space-time coordinates he may have been sent to. If he survived, that is,” the physicist added, with an apologetic expression. He typed a few things into a console, and a stream of numbers appeared on one of Tony’s computers. “I wish there was more I could do to help.”

“And if the coordinates are wrong?”

“Then I’m afraid, Mr Stark, you’re just going to have to plug in some random variables and… pray.”

+

“Wait, you’re saying I  _died_?” Steve’s voice swung high, and he stared hard at the Not-Steve sitting next to him. Creepily enough, Not-Steve would look back every time Steve glanced at him, and offer a friendly smile. Without a scrap of emotion in his eyes. It gave Steve the chills every single time it happened. “Then why am I— Why is he—” He waved his hand at Not-Steve.

Not-Tony looked worn out, which was sort of how Steve felt after hours of interrogation and having various sensors stuck to and unstuck from his body for Not-Tony to investigate. He’d drawn the line at having anything poked in him, though; whatever was going on, Steve seriously doubted it had anything to do with his blood.

“You died,” Not-Tony agreed, and Steve was suddenly seeing the heavy lines at the corners of his mouth, the darker circles under his eyes, the haggard set to his jaw; so similar to his Tony and so utterly different at the same time. “Three years ago.” He explained the mission, explained how Steve (Not-Steve? Other Not-Steve?) had taken a hit and for a while, for a while he’d been in a coma. “I thought I would get you back,” Not-Tony said, voice cracking, “and then one day you just.. stopped breathing.” He had extracted DNA and built an entire facility for one purpose: rebuilding Captain America. “It was crazy,” Not-Tony said, glancing over at Not-Steve. “But I built a robot. A robot that’s mostly organic. Every detail is there. Every single freckle…” His voice trailed off, and Steve had the sudden urge to reach across the table and rest a hand over his. But then Not-Tony looked up at Not-Steve, and Not-Steve smiled his damning, innocent smile back at him. “He can finally smile. For a year, he couldn’t figure out when to smile and when to frown. Do you know how difficult it is to program that?”

Steve shook his head.

“I’ve been weaving Steve’s—your—personality back into him, one neuron at a time. Another two years, three… maybe he’ll be fully reborn.”

And in the glint of Not-Tony’s eye, Steve saw the haggard madness of a man whose entire purpose in life had crystallized into one goal.

+

Tony almost had it figured out. He’d spent the past three days sleepless, poring over experiment logs and quantum physics journals until he felt his own voice in his head was speaking a different language. It got to the point where he wasn’t sure if he was getting closer to the right formula, or if his mind was unraveling to a point that convinced him he was.

He thought it would work. He thought he might have a psychic break if it didn’t.

+

Night fell, and Steve was left alone, however briefly, to shower before bed. He kept the water cold and changed into pajamas he only realized must have been Not-Steve’s after he’d already put them on. He looked at himself in the mirror and wondered, for the first time all day, how he was going to get home.

“I’ve worked out the formula, based on my scan,” Not-Tony said, stepping out of the doorway Steve hadn’t realized he’d been lingering in. “I’m fairly certain I can get you home.” Either Not-Tony could read his mind or he’d managed to look particularly homesick; Steve wasn’t sure which was more likely.

“You can?” How much did he trust a man whom grief had driven to the point of madness? Then again, how much choice did he have?

“The formula’s right. It all depends on the setup on the other end, and I have no way to control that.” Steve realized that Not-Steve was behind Not-Tony, and for a fleeting second he thought he saw an expression of resigned jealousy cross his features before they settled back into benevolent neutral. Not-Tony glanced back at him, and then Not-Steve moved away. “Come to bed. In the morning, I’ll send you home.”

Steve’s throat tightened. Did he mean.. come to bed, or come to  _bed?_

“I…”

“I’m not asking you to sleep with me, Steve.” Not-Tony scowled, but then his facial lines softened. “Give me one night, Steve. One night of things being normal again. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to sleep right.”

And Steve couldn’t say no. He couldn’t, not when he thought somewhere, some _when_  there might be another Not-Steve saying no to his Tony, his Tony driven half-mad with loss, his Tony with shadows this dark under his eyes and the hint of whisky stronger than ever on his breath. And Steve went to bed, Not-Tony curled defensively against the side of his chest and beyond him, Not-Steve trying to offer the comfort the other man refused to take.

Another two or three years, that was how long it was supposed to take to get Not-Steve back to being the person Not-Tony missed. Steve glanced down at the dark head of hair on the pillow. Just past it, Not-Steve’s eyes met his, and he smiled his empty, sad smile. But the blue eyes were more intent than Steve thought Not-Tony gave them credit for, especially when Not-Steve carefully wrapped his arms around the sleeping man and pulled him back against himself. Steve settled back into the pillow.  _Maybe it won’t take as long as he thinks,_ he thought before sinking into sleep.  _Maybe there’s more hope than he realizes_.

+

When his eyes opened, he was back in the work room, staring at the edge of the desk where he’d left his coffee cup—coffee that had now grown a handsome colony of mold. He didn’t have time to contemplate it, because this time it was his Tony calling his name, and his Tony grabbing him by the front of the shirt.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Tony hissed, with sleepless smudges under his eyes and his mouth set in a hard line. “You have no idea how close you were to never coming back.”

Steve took in the messy hair, and the half-torn t-shirt with its grease stains, and the anxious blue glow at the center of Tony’s chest. His Tony.

“I think I do,” Steve replied quietly, and shut Tony up with a kiss.


End file.
